What makes a happy life? Shukishi and Tomi contemplate death in Atami (Franklin)

    The scenes in Atami capture with beautiful clarity a universal feeling. This is an anxiety that comes from being out of one’s place with a suspicion that the only option for change is not the correct choice.  The root of this anxiety is the difficulty of answering for oneself what makes a happy life.  Shukishi and Tomi, being the elder generation, are asking themselves this question from the get-go, and probably more so the further on in years they get.  Tomi addresses this question through the lens of youth, and so in a somewhat lighter context, when she asks Isamu what he will grow up to be.  She doesn’t get an answer, and it is natural for such thoughts to be far from young minds.  The overwhelming melancholy of asking yourself this question in the framework of old age should be apparent: “What have I become?”.  This is the internal space of Shukishi and Tomi while they sit on the seawall in Atami, as elucidated by their conversation and the arrangement of the shots along the sea.



    They sit side by side watching the waves roll in, and speak of their stay.  This spa is not for them, but for the youth.  This is a realization that business and pleasure are worlds for the young, and more importantly that reflection and contemplation are those of the aged.  In part their question is answered: “I have become old”.  The anxiety here emerges in response, particularly the inquiry “Is this all I have become?”.  The decision to go home is motivated by this anxiety, motivated toward the same-old same-old, the comforts of home that justify who a person is there.  If they don’t belong in the youthful world with their children, Shukishi and Tomi might as well retreat to their own space -- and perhaps their own time.



    When they stand to leave, Tomi has a moment of dizziness (so she says) which, for the director, portends to events to come, but for the viewer this points to the past.  Shukishi I cannot help but think is struck by the relationship he has had with Tomi.  Coming out of the answer “I have become old” emerges the truthful form of such an answer: “I have in fact lived”.  The consequence of this realization is that there is no going back to one’s own time; the world of the young and old coincide.  Shukishi here must think not only of the way his life has shaped him, but how he has shaped his life.  This is in respect to answering “What have I become?”.  The question of self is a bottomless can of worms, but the question of self in relation to wife and child(ren) is truly elucidating in light of a life coming to an end.


    

    A comfort for Shukishi is that through all that he has done and all that life has thrown at him and Tomi, she still follows him.  A hope falls out of this fact that with time, reflection, and contemplation his children will too come around to the life he has led as a nuanced and heartfelt attempt to be his best toward his family and the world.

Comments

  1. Krishnan VenkateshNovember 7, 2021 at 8:02 PM

    Beautifully written and observed. So do you think Tomi's "dizziness" is really caused by existential reflection, her being floored by the contemplation of her own life? The sad thing about the working young in this world is that they are under so much pressure to succeed and have to be working all the time -- and so they play hard, at places like Atami. Life at Onomichi was so much more "measured."

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